After the catastrophic days of Labor, Tony Abbott was the man we trusted to steer the country back to prosperity. Things were going along nicely - asylum boats were stopped and detention centres closed - but then he committed political suicide by bringing down a budget that punishes the poor and leaves the rich relatively unscathed.
For a Rhodes Scholar, he's not very smart. He continues to make a bad situation worse by denying he lied to the electorate before the election when he knows damn well that he did. His lies far outweigh Julia Gillard's infamous words "There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead" and he continues to dig himself deeper every day.
The tragedy is that the only real alternative is Bill Shorten who must be loving every minute. He now has an 11 point advantage as preferred Prime Minister and Abbott's approval rating has dropped 21 points since budget night.
State Premiers are incensed by the withdrawal of $80 billion over a decade for health and education and were stunned by the news that they will be expected to run their own show without any help from the feds.
An independent analysis of the budget by the Australian National University found that high income earners will not do any "heavy lifting" at all. Well paid couples will be worse off by just 0.09 per cent but a single parent on payments with a child aged six will lose more than 10 per cent of their income.
So the man we put our trust in to bring the country back on track has blown it. He knows we can't go back to Labor and is banking on picking up enough support to get back in by the time the next election comes around, still a long way off. But he shouldn't hold his breath.
If the LNP has any hope of redemption, Abbott must admit he lied and scrap the harsh measures he's imposed on the poor now, before it's too late.
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